


Refraction

by RamblingIntoTheDistance



Category: Kingdom Hearts
Genre: Ambiguous Time Frame, Gen, Technically takes place in Sora's heart but he's not otherwise there so I'm not tagging him, post-bbs, that trailer sure was something huh
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-29
Updated: 2018-10-29
Packaged: 2019-08-09 06:18:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,424
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16444427
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RamblingIntoTheDistance/pseuds/RamblingIntoTheDistance
Summary: Vanitas learns the interior of the room by heart, exploring every inch of it in an attempt to not go crazy from boredom.  He takes to watching the doors from a perch atop Ventus’ throne.He’s not fully expecting anything to happen, but... something tells him that one day, someone is going to come through those doors.He wonders how long it’s been.He hoped Ventus’ friends come to get him soon.  Maybe he can slip out then, get out of this monotonous place.Surely they mean to come fetch Ventus.





	Refraction

It takes a while before he realizes he’s awake.  Or. Maybe he’s not. It certainly feels surreal enough to be a dream of some sort, but there’s something in the way the sunlight shivers through the air, warm enough to be nearly tangible but never  _quite_ enough to cause discomfort, that feels... off.     
  
Off in a welcoming, almost familiar way that itches at him, pulls his attention to it incessantly.  It reeks of heart nonsense.   
  
But he-  He can’t-  He can hardly move.   
  
He can hardly even _blink_ , eyelids feeling like something heavy is coating them, resisting any attempt to open.  He can only just barely see past the relaxed squint that he needs to focus to hold.   
  
The world around him is... strange.  Gaudy gold and white, dots of color inlaid inside, and smudges of blue coat the walls.  More colors wash through the room sometimes, the path of an imagined sun trailing them across the ground.   
  
Vanitas recognizes this place, eventually.  It’s the - the place with the  _other_.  And his.  What’s the word?  He feels the echo of disdain, but can only muster up a feeling of tiredness.  His head droops.   
  
  
——   
  
  
Friends.     
  
The word was friend.   
  
_My friends are my power_ , the other says.  Vanitas can feel the words echo over his own tongue. _And I’m theirs._ _  
_   
  
——   
  
  
_Departure_ , he thinks sometime later. _The Land of Departure_.  What an odd name.     
  
Celebrating the departure of what?  The graduates? New masters, off to _save the worlds_?   
  
He forces his head back, his eyes open, and the colors of the stained glass mounted into the wall pound harshly into his vision.     
  
Oh.   
  
Right.   
  
They left, from here, didn’t they.   
  
His head lolls.   
  
The friends and the other.  Ventus.   
  
  
——   
  
  
Vanitas awakens with a jolt.  Which means to say, in this state, a slight jerk of the arms.     
  
That’s right.   
  
Ventus had shattered the two of them.  How was he-?   
  
He’d seen Ventus disappearing along with him, at the end.  Maybe they’d rejoined, in some fashion. However Ventus had been saved, maybe he’d been pulled along.     
  
Wait.   
  
How even is one _salvaged_ from such a break in their heart?  Let alone _saved_ ?  But it made sense, he supposes.  The friends would hardly settle for anything less.   
  
This time he can feel a weak sting of annoyance curl inside him. There’s no accompanying urge to separate from it, though.     
  
Vanitas frowns, digs into the feeling.  Lets it kindle, rise through his chest. Lets it fade.     
  
Nothing.   
  
He reaches out.     
  
Vanitas chokes, diaphragm lurching him forwards out of a seated slump, thankfully shaking off some of the strange lethargy.  He catches himself with his hands (gloved, of _course_ ), and rolls to a crouch to stare wildly at the room around him.   
  
_He can’t feel anything past the room_.  There’s nothing there but a sea of insubstantial light and dark.   
  
And within the room, there’s nothing but -   
  
Vanitas stumbles to his feet, managing to maneuver himself around the ridiculous throne things only by hanging on to them for support.   
  
Slumped in the very throne he’d woken up against, unwittingly mirroring, is Ventus.   
  
Vanitas lets himself stare for a few minutes, composing himself.     
  
Almost tentatively, he reaches out a hand.  Hesitates. Steels himself and grabs the other boy’s shoulder.  (Nothing happens, no pain or sudden swell of instinct to _go back this isn’t right unnatural abomination_ )   
  
Vanitas shakes him.  Gently, at first, or at least it is by his standards.  Harder, then.   
  
“Idiot,” he rasps, “Wake up.”   
  
Nothing happens.     
  
Nothing.   
  
There is.   
  
No.   
  
Vanitas lets out a shaky breath.  Ventus, at least, even if he’s asleep, is real.  As real as he is.   
  
He’s pretty sure.   
  
Vanitas isn’t sure how real he is.     
  
Oh, that’s right.  Stupid heart nonsense.   
  
That’s probably the reason why he can’t feel anything outside the room.   There isn’t anything outside the room.   
  
If he has to guess (and he does), this place is in their heart.  Probably more from Ventus’ half, he figures. He certainly isn’t this attached to the Land of Departure.   
  
Vanitas looks again to the figure slouched in the chair.  His head has rolled forwards again, and the half-shadow cast by the large back of the chair covers all but the very far edge of his side.     
  
Vanitas feels, down to his very bones, that he shouldn’t be moved.   
  
Doesn’t mean he can’t be disturbed, he supposes.   
  
There’s no way he’s staying cooped up in a single room with only the shell of his other half to keep him company.   
  
  
——   
  
  
Vanitas can’t create unversed here.   The instinct to rend the link to a burgeoning emotion no longer comes, and with it goes his very ability to do so.   
  
He wishes he still could.   
  
Vanitas wants to _fight_ something.   
  
  
——   
  
  
He wishes Ventus was awake - Vanitas _knows_ he’d be able to get a fight out of him.     
  
He’d hold back a bit so he wouldn’t lose his entertainment, of course, but losing isn’t such a bad prospect either.  Unconsciousness sounds better than this endless tedium.   
  
  
——   
  
  
Ventus won’t wake up no matter what he does. Vanitas is pretty sure he can’t.   Even he gets tired of shaking him after a while.   
  
He slumps against the side of the chair and tries not to think.   The tiles on the floor are warm and smooth, and don’t give an inch when he hits them.   
  
  
——   
  
  
Vanitas learns the interior of the room by heart (ha), explores every inch of it in an attempt to not go crazy from boredom.  He takes to watching the doors from a perch atop Ventus’ throne.   
  
He’s not fully expecting anything to happen, but... something tells him that one day, someone is going to come through those doors.   
  
He wonders how long it’s been.   
  
He hoped Ventus’ friends come to get him soon.  Maybe he can slip out then, get out of this monotonous place.   
  
Surely they mean to come fetch Ventus.   
  
  
——-   
  
  
In lieu of talking to himself, he talks to Ventus.   
  
At first, it’s just screaming.  He swears, yells himself hoarse.  He knocks over one of the other thrones, once.   
  
When he tries to sleep, however, it bothers him.  The eerie awareness of it nags at him until he repents and rights it. The feeling ceases almost instantly, the chair looking for all the worlds like it had never been disturbed from its pristine position in the first place.   
  
He doesn’t do it again.   
  
Over time, though, he stops venting with the intention of getting the other boy to respond and just... rambles.  Rants about his boredom, talks about fighting, spells, mumbles through the way he can sometimes feel weird shifts through the energy outside the room.   
  
Ventus listens, when he talks.  He’s pretty sure. He’ll twitch sometimes, and Vanitas can sense _something_ shifting inside.     
  
Once, he talks about their split.  Ventus gets a bit riled up, but that’s not entirely unusual when he talks about the past.     
  
He segues into retelling his experiences with Master Xehanort, and the feedback he’s getting from Ventus goes a bit haywire.   
  
He stops talking, then, and pretends nothing happened.  Eventually, Ventus becomes less agitated.   
  
Vanitas doesn’t bring it up again.   
  
  
——   
  
  
He still flips between talking to Ventus and taunting him, but he admits that he’s grown a bit attached to him.   
  
Ventus knows hardly anything about the ways the worlds work, and more often now it’s easy to read his curiosity and wonder as Vanitas explains odds and ends as they cross his mind.   
  
  
——   
  
  
He figures that their must be _some_ way to know anything about whatever’s outside, and hesitantly tries to mimic the oddly meditative state that he woke up in. He hates it, and all he gets for his trouble is a feeling of familiarity and sun.   
  
  
——   
  
  
He tries not to think about how he doesn’t know - can’t tell - how much time has passed.   
  
  
——   
  
  
All at once, he senses Ventus panic. Something must be wrong, Vanitas knows.  He focuses, tries to calm himself, and searches for whatever’s happening.   
  
Vanitas reaches out.   
  
  
——   
  
  
He registers a shadowed figure, and as clear as his own thoughts, hears Ventus’ cry of “TERRA!” but then -   
  
_Do not interfere_ , rings through him, solid and inescapable.   
  
-he is pulled backwards, losing comprehension in a rush and -   
  
  
——   
  
  
There’s blurred mixture of fractured light and wrought shadow before him.   
  
  
——   
  
  
Vanitas reawakens, _not the prisoner_ still falling from his mouth.  Slowly, he raises his hands into view.   
  
He’s.  They’re. They’re shaking. He can’t look away.   
  
He registers Ventus, still in his chair, at his back. The other feels tired, somehow.     
  
Vanitas is shaking.   
  
  
——   
  
  
After it - whatever it was - happened, Ventus had felt more awake, almost _buzzing_ against his senses.   
  
Vanitas had hoped, a little, that that had meant Ventus was waking up.  It might have, he thinks. It felt right.   
  
But it had worn off, slowly. Now, as far as he could tell, it was gone, Ventus instead almost nearing the level of inactivity that had been the norm of soon after he had woken up, and Vanitas is at a loss.   
  
Something is happening, clearly, and he wants to know what. And more than that, Vanitas wants out. Out of this room and its perpetual curtain of colored light, silent and solemn and still.   
  
Away from this never-ending nothingness, this void of action that would have left him mad long ago were it not what it was.   
  
  
——   
  
  
Ventus is clearly the answer.     
  
If Ventus wakes up, then he can get out.  Even if it’s not out of this room, he’d still have a more complete form of company than a limp form sprawled in a chair.   
  
He mulls over possibilities and finds nothing.  Ventus clearly started waking up when he was agitated by - whatever it was.  But he has now idea how to recreate that.   
  
He scowls and kicks the floor.   
  
Vanitas paces, muttering to himself.  He clenches his hand as if to summon his keyblade, in a manner he hadn’t indulged in since after he had discovered that it wouldn’t come.   
  
His paces become more agitated, and he stomps his feet so it feels like he can hear his steps through the small shocks that run up his legs, despite the padding of his soles.     
  
His trail leads him to a wall, and without thinking, Vanitas makes as if to strike it.   
  
And his keyblade is in hand.   
  
Vanitas stares.   
  
It.  It comes _now_ ?  After how long?   
  
Explanations shot through his mind, but something brings him to a halt.   
  
This doesn’t feel like his keyblade. It doesn’t feel like a keyblade.   
  
It doesn’t even feel like it really exists, not like it did during his last clash with Ventus.   
  
It’s an illusion, he realizes. A construct, just as real as this room is.   
  
He shifts it, feels the heft.  Reaches back, swipes it at his arm.  It bounces off. His forearm stings slightly, more like it had been the wooden imitation he’d broken than any keyblade he’s had leveled against him before.   
  
He thinks.   
  
He created this, surely.  Nobody else would.   
  
What else could he conjure up?   
  
Vanitas thinks of the way Ventus had screamed across their shared space at the semblance of Terra.   
  
Remembers the way his very posture had been a study in defiance, determination shaping his features even as their heart shattered into brilliant fractals. Unmovable as they scattered into the void.   
  
Pictures the cold steam around him, rising as his wrath demolishes his bindings. His eyes, suffused with fire, glaring across at Vanitas, poised over the body of his fallen friend.   
  
Vanitas grins.  He has a plan.   
  
  
——   
  
  
He knows he only gets one shot at this.   There’s every chance Ventus could catch on that what’s before him is only an illusion.  So he plans. He practices, carefully, quietly, always hidden behind the chairs and only when he senses a dip in Ventus’ awareness.   
  
He relearns how to throw up a shield. How to shape it, make it big enough, strong enough, to hold off an attack the size that only a Master could ever throw at him.   Just to be cautious.   
  
  
——   
  
  
As Ventus’ attention rises again, he stalks forward, clearly in his line of sight. Vanitas pictures the way Master Xehanort held himself, the manner in which he spoke during his lectures.   
  
He shapes his mouth around the words. They feel like they almost don’t fit, anymore, but he spits them out as best he can.   
  
His lips curve as he speaks, and he forces the smirk into a grin, then bigger. Tilts back his head and laughs. Pours into it all the frustration and glee he can’t channel into Unversed anymore.      
  
His throat hurts, a bit.  That’s alright. Ventus is getting agitated. He’s waking up.   
  
Vanitas strides away from the chair to stand directly across from it, and before, this room had always felt cramped. Now?  Now, it has never felt so wide. His footsteps feel like they echo across the cavernous hall.   
  
His breath wants to come unsteadily. He doesn’t let it.   
  
The warm colors and streaming light have never felt more fake. They’ve never felt more real.   
  
Ventus is stirring. Vanitas can feel it in his bones, in his very being, like a vibration, like a song he heard once, a quiet series of notes clamoring into a crescendo.   
  
He reaches his spot. Half a room away, carefully decided.   
  
Vanitas pauses.  He measures his breath.      
  
In.   
  
Out.   
  
Vanitas turns, folds all his nervousness into his triumph and bares his teeth in the fiercest smile he can make.   
  
Ventus is waking.   
  
Vanitas bows, arms extended, dramatic and sarcastic and mocking.  As he folds at the waist, he flickers a wave of darkness into being, disguising his summoning of the most important illusion.   
  
An image of Aqua, directly from his memories and clad in the armor that he’d fought her in, lies at his feet. He summons the false keyblade.   
  
Ventus is nearly awake, now, and it feels like a thundercloud before a lightning strike.   
  
He raises his mask, steps forward.  He sends his shield skittering into being, barricading the whole of the space between them.   
  
Vanitas lifts his keyblade.  It’s a mimicry of their positions when they’d fought in the Graveyard, but it works.   
  
Ventus awakens in a pulse of light and rage, flaring both so fiercely that, in this moment, he can feel nothing else - not the false room, not the void outside, not whatever lurks beyond.   
  
Squinting at the force of it, even behind his mask, Vanitas feels a wild grin forming, ecstatic and exciting and more energetic than anything he’s felt in years.

**Author's Note:**

> I started writing this after the last trailer. Which was... over a month ago. Whoops. 
> 
> (The thought process leading up to this fic is pretty much ' "Brother"????? what the heck. when did. what. ????')
> 
> Not quite happy with the ending (and hurray for a kind of awkward writing style!), but eh.
> 
> Anyways. Feedback would be great, if anybody feels like it. Thanks for reading! :D


End file.
